Last night my laptop kept freezing up – several times. I tried control-alt-delete, didn’t work. I eventually had to go with the start button, it would come on…and the cycle would start all over again.
At first, I thought it might be because our connection wasn’t working properly, but it’s still doing it this morning. I ran a virus scan, a spyware scan, nothing. 
I’m going to try a defrag just in case, but what could it be?
(I’m using Windows 7)
How old is it? Hard drive lives aren’t much past 5 years. If you are running Windows 7 it sounds like it may be about that old or older.
first place to start is assume a software issue. installed any new software recently- even scummy bits of software like searchbars and little gimmicky programs? if the laptop freezes reguarly, first step is either-
disable all non-MS or System running programs, and temporarily turn them off for automatic start-up. restart, ensure they are all not running (you can see in Task manager) see how that goes. No hang-ups - its a process of software elimination for you!
reboot computer into safe mode, and see how that goes. use safe mode wit networking. no problems in safe mode - a more complex software issue!
You are not mentioning Blue Screen of Death, so hopefully its not critical hardware failure. however if it is a piece of hardware, it can get tricky to approach. Let us know how you go with above steps one and two. Driver conflict with acceptable hardware is another option, but is manifesting strangely based on your symptoms
After all that, If fall else fails, a full windows restore may be in order. I hope you can easily install all programs and files back to what you need as you would certainly want to do a fresh/clean install.
P.S forgot to add, to get a help guide to do any of the things i talked about - inhibiting start-up programs, force-stopping programs that are running in the background, and entering safe mode, just google the question directly (including windows 7 as the OS) and there will be tonnes of guides.
The hardware checking step is started through BIOS/UEFI, but don’t yet jump into that space unless you are already knowledgeable, or find a really thorough guide that MATCHES your hardware.
Cheers,
We had a similar problem with our laptop a couple of years ago, took it into a computer repair shop. Turned out the fan was clogged with lint and dust, and it was not staying cool enough, so started having performance issues. Once the fan was cleaned-out, no freezing (ironically).
Agree… could easily be a heat issue caused by accumulation of dust bunnies in the fan and heatsink area. Laptop needs opening and cleaning. Not for the faint of heart
Well, it turns out – that it was CHROME freezing it up. At least, so far. I’m using Firefox for now, and I haven’t had a problem. Keep your fingers crossed for me. If it doesn’t work, then I’ll try and see if is a hardware problem. But so far, so good.
If it FREEZES - nothing happens, no cursor, no flashing, no mouse pointer move - then I will second (third) the heat issue. Processor or something gets too hot, the video chip works fine, but the processor does nothing so the screen freezes. I’ve seen this when whatever fan cools the processor breaks or clogs. The processor uses a lot of power and generates a lot of heat.
But yes, if it happens during a particular software, that as you’ve found is the place to start.
Well that’s exactly what was happening – the computer itself just seized up – NOTHING would move, or flash, or anything. But then I thought, why not try using a different browser, and see if that was it? And so far…it seems to be working. (I’ll still get the fan looked at, but for the time being, it looks like that might have been the problem. Go figure)
Well, it’s doing it again. So I guess I’d better bring it in. (God, I hope it can be fixed. I can’t afford a new laptop.)
Here’s one more vote for overheating as the possible culprit. I’ve had a couple laptops that did not like my lap…my pants would block one of the vents and everything would just lock up. Worked just fine if I had them on a flat surface with room for air to enter. A quick interior cleaning resolved the problem.
There are several utilities that may allow you to monitor CPU temperature and fan speed, if you want to go to the trouble.
Yeah, I’m gonna take it in and get it looked at and cleaned out when I get the chance. In the mean time, switching to a new browser again seemed to help. (I’m using Opera) What kind of lap desk is the best? I generally use a breakfast tray.
I’ll run some scans later and see what’s what. Thanks.
I owned an aluminum lap desk with fans built into it for an old HP laptop I owned years ago. That laptop used to heat up when I ran games with high graphics and the desk helped. I’m sure they still make them.
Still get the system looked at. Besides dust clogging the vents you may have a broken or malfunctioning fan if it’s a heating issue. A good diagnostic should find the cause.
Will do – but right now I have some other expenses I have to take care of. If worst comes to worst, I can borrow my dad’s computer. (I’m just wondering why it works when I switch browsers?)
Maybe if I run a fan while I’m on the computer? Since it’s getting warmer outside.
The laptop is overheating internally, not externally, so blowing a regular fan on it probably won’t help. The desk I used cooled the laptop because it was in direct contact with it and drew heat away through the aluminum which acted as a heat sink. The fans helped push the gathered heat away from the desk.
The reason a computer gets hot is because it is doing something that causes internal components to overheat. Think of how hot you get riding an exercise bike compared to sitting on a couch. It can be triggered or made worse by the activity. So maybe something Chrome does is giving it problems.
The first PC I built was almost 20 years ago when I worked in a computer store. I built it out of spare parts. At one point it started to lock up when it tried to boot (Windows 95). If I booted it into Safe Mode, it would start up just fine. With Safe Mode the computer was running only the bare minimum background programs it needed to run, just enough to let you poke around and try to fix things but not enough to really do much on it.
I assumed it was a software problem because I assumed one of those background programs (like a driver or service) was crashing it. But a buddy of mine who was much more computer savvy than I was at the time said I should open my computer when I turned it on to look at what was happening. When I did that I saw that the little fan on the CPU (the computer’s “brain”) wasn’t spinning. The reason Safe Mode didn’t lock up was because it didn’t stress the CPU out enough to make it overheat.
I replaced the fan and it booted fine into normal mode. Lesson learned: overheating can easily mislead you.
Here’s something like what I used to use for my laptop:
I’ve always used cans of compressed air to clean out my laptop’s fan openings. It worked for a long time. Usually I always do suspect the culprit to be a stack overflow or some other bad coding that causes it to eat memory and freeze up. As long as the fans are clean and running, nothing too memory intensive on the GPU, you can typically bet it is a software issue. I used to have the same problem with Chrome, so I went with firefox, I’ll still get issues now and then but at least I can open a task manager to force close it. Chrome prides itself with being fast, but it’s still memory hungry and causes hangups for me, I just choose to avoid it.
It might be worth it to uninstall Chrome, download a new installer, and reinstall it from scratch if it’s really only locking up in Chrome.
I prefer Firefox, I’ve used it since it first came out (and used to run Mozilla before Firefox, and Netscape before that).
Now see, I switched from Chrome to Firefox, and it was fine for awhile, then it started doing it again. But now I switched to Opera, and it was fine. Why would switching browsers like that make a difference? I’m going to look into the cooling pad as well.
BTW, how much should it set me back to get it cleaned?
Run System Restore back to the last time the laptop worked normally. If overheating is the cause, you should hear the fan running more than usual. Get a can of air and blow out the vents. Also, someone mentioned that you should download a utility to monitor the CPU temp.